my stand up skills

Where do my stand up skills come from? Well, as I wrote earlier, I have boxed, and did Jeet Kune Do with Paul Vunak, as well as extensively trained Savate (a criminally underrated art). Currently, besides my training partners like Howard Lawson and Mike Grandinetti and a decent amount of ability to self coach and a willingness to train hard and regularly, I owe an enormous amount to two people.

One is Adam Singer. He runs the Hard Core Gym in Athens, GA. One of his fighters, Forrest Griffin, has a three year contract to fight in the UFC. Another fighter, Rory Singer, will be there soon. He has other guys who have fought in local events, along with doing very well in submission grappling tournaments. He is a terrifc coach who knows how to tie all the the aspects of MMA (striking, clinch, grappling, conditioning, mental) together. His own performance skills are amazing, and more people would know it if he wasn't focused on being a great coach and his real career of bio-chemical engineering (or something ridiculously complex like that). I take great pride also in that he has become a very close friend. I would trust him with my life. He has two FANTASTIC instructional DVD's on the clinch. Get them both, they are must haves. Check them out at his website at http://www.thehardcoregym.net

The other person responsible for what stand up skills I have is Rodney King. He has a great background in boxing and thai boxing and has created a system that allows anyone to function at a decent level of striking in a very short amount of time. It is referred to as the crazy monkey or CM for short. The brilliance of CM is it lets people with a lesser level of athletic skill hang with people who have a decided advantage of physical superiority. It keeps you from being hit as much or as hard while having less time to train it. He also has an uncanny way of teaching someone to hit harder, more accurately, and more often than they could ever believe. He is also someone I can call a friend. He is a good person with a high sense of ethics, but his taste in music is a little suspect (sorry Coach LOL). I have the honor of being an authorized coach with his group Street Tough World Alliance (of which Adam is also an important part). He has three great DVD's that, along with Adam's two, I consider the cornerstone of my library. Check out his website at http://www.streetbrawl.co.za/

You cannot go wrong training with either one of these guys.